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Article 5949 of comp.ai.philosophy:
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>From: rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Grounding: Virtual vs. Real
Message-ID: <1992May27.193153.19128@mp.cs.niu.edu>
Date: 27 May 92 19:31:53 GMT
Article-I.D.: mp.1992May27.193153.19128
References: <1992May25.214006.29965@Princeton.EDU> <1992May26.022413.14151@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1992May27.183408.4868@spss.com>
Organization: Northern Illinois University
Lines: 75

In article <1992May27.183408.4868@spss.com> markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:
>In article <1992May26.022413.14151@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu 
>(Neil Rickert) writes (quoting Stevan Harnad):
>>>Now here is the analogy with the TTT-robot: If the robot REALLY has the
>>>capacity to pass the TTT, that capacity is not lost if it never gets to
>>>use it, or if it uses it only in a simulated environment.

>> But if you unplug the transducers of your TTT-robot, and in their place
>>plug in connections to a computer producing the virtual reality input,
>>you have exactly the situation you have just denied is possible.  How
>>can it be that whether input comes from a transducer or from a computer
>>changes anything at all, if the input does not change?
>
>I think it's part of Harnad's point that the transducers are not *attached*
>to a thinking system, whose input is the transducers' output; they are 
>*part* of the thinking system, whose input is physical (the transducers'
>input).

  Yes.  I believe that is what Harnad is saying.  And what I am saying is that
this is obvious nonsense.

  Picture a TTT system receiving virtual reality input.  As part of that
virtual reality it is listening to music from a compact disk, and
is connected to a computer via a modem.

  The output of the computer is digital.  It is converted to analog
by the modem, then converted back to digital by the connecting modem.

  The data on the compact disk is digital.  It is converted to analog
by the CD player, converted to air motion by the loadspeaker, then
converted back to digital by the transducer.

  What I am proposing is that we replace the two modems by a null modem
cable, and replace the CD player/stereo system/loadspeaker/transducer
with a digital CD-ROM reader.  Apparently we are to suppose that the
thinking and intelligence suddenly disappears.

  Of course this is preposterous.  Where was the thinking and the
intelligence?  Was it in the modem?  Was it in the stereo?  Was it in
the loadspeaker?

  This reminds me of the nonsense that went on about classical music
recordings in the early days of CDs.  Many music buffs claimed that
CDs were a poor imitation of LP records, and that they could hear
the difference.  Never mind the fact that both the analog LP and the
digital CD were made from the same digital master tapes.  Somehow,
by skipping the analog conversion to the LP some mysterious but
important musical quality was being lost.  Well fortunately that
preposterous argument has just about disappeared from the record
reviews.  But exactly the same faulty reasoning lives on in this
TTT argument.

  -------

  Let me put this in context.

  The analog conversion and the transducers do have one important effect.
They create a situation where Searle's CR reasoning does not apply.  Apart
from a loss of information due to imperfect conversion between analog and
digital signals, the do not do anything else.

  Unless there is reason to believe that biological systems can represent
and maintain data to infinite precision, there is nothing true about
analog data representations that does not equally apply to floating
point digital representations.

  What this TTT argument really does is expose the bankruptcy of the
assumptions made by Searle, particularly when applied to floating point
data.

-- 
=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=*=
  Neil W. Rickert, Computer Science               <rickert@cs.niu.edu>
  Northern Illinois Univ.
  DeKalb, IL 60115                                   +1-815-753-6940


